American pastors are abandoning their posts, left and right, and at an alarming rate. They are not leaving their churches or getting other jobs. Congregations still pay their salaries. Their names remain on the church stationary and they continue to appear in the pulpits on Sundays. But they are abandoning their posts, their calling. They have gone whoring after other gods. What they do with their time under the guise of pastoral ministry hasn’t the remotest connection with what the church’s pastors have done for most of twenty centuries.
A few of us are angry about it. We are angry because we have been deserted…. It is bitterly disappointing to enter a room full of people whom you have every reason to expect share the quest and commitments of pastoral work and find within ten minutes that they most definitely do not. They talk of images and statistics. They drop names. They discuss influence and status. Matters of God and the soul and Scriptures are not grist for their mills. | Eugene Peterson, Working the Angles
On Sunday, I preached on John’s disciples getting jealous about the ministry of Jesus. I said that ministry competitiveness exists in the heart of every pastor. The question is not: does your pastor struggle with this? but instead: is your pastor doing anything to combat this? On the heels of this, a pastor friend of mine sent me 8 confessions that he returns to regularly to remind himself of the fickle nature of his own heart. I resonate with these:
- Savior God, I confess that I look to the success of the church to give me significance and worth. Help me to find my significance and worth in your love towards me and presence with me.
- Savior God, I confess that I am not content with the results you ordain but demand you do more. Help me to be content to be faithful and trust you when the results look different than I desire.
- Savior God, I confess that I want to control your church and your people, rather than let you be in control. Help me to leave your church and your people in your hands, and simply be your instrument, mouthpiece, and under-shepherd.
- Savior God, I confess that I want people to be impressed with me and with “my” church. Help me to desire your glory, even if it means I and the church I lead are seen as small, insignificant, weak, even weird.
- Savior God, I confess that I am full of much bitterness and little grace towards the people you have given me to care for. Help me to remember that your church is comprised of people who yet need your gospel, your promises, your exhortation, and that I too am one of those.
- Savior God, I confess that I quickly lose confidence in your word and your promises when I don’t see things happening as I expect. Help me to patiently cling to your means, your calling on me, even when the timing and results aren’t what I hope.
- Savior God, I confess that I buy into the worldly understanding of success and power, wanting my glory and recognition more than yours. Help me to patiently trust in your Spirit working through your Word as the greatest source of power, and see the fruit that you bear in each individual life as success.
- Savior God, I confess that my obsession with worldly success and power blinds me to the good things you are doing, the clear ways you are working in and through me and the church. Purify my priorities, passion, and focus so that I may always look for and see the work you are doing.
The other side of this is: it is not your pastor’s job alone to fight for this. I was talking with someone this week about the changing nature of the pastorate and that fewer and fewer pastors seem to be in it for the long haul. It seems to be more of a seasonal calling and less of a vocation. There are a lot of reasons for this, but part is the dynamic between the pastor and the people.
The way that a church treats its pastors and their expectations of the church plays a large part on whether or not they live out the calling of pastor. This is why the Bible creates expectations for the pastor as well as for the congregation. The work of the church is not achieving a stated goal, but of creating healthy relationships. At the core of that is a pastor who is committed to a people, out of a love for the grace of God; and a people who recognize that the person who has been called to lead them is just that: a person who has been called by God to lead them. All pastors have both strengths and weaknesses, which will be seen as they walk with a people through time.
The whole dynamic can only work if God intervenes into the situation: humbling the heart of the pastor, and giving the church a love for their pastors that can survive their humanness. God is there, ready to play His part, but we must go to Him in prayer, in His Word, and with others to experience the benefits. The church was given to us as a gift to be stewarded, if done right, it has the ability to produce beauty and to be a blessing to all who interact with it.
Practice these things, immerse yourself in them, so that all may see your progress. Keep a close watch on yourself and on the teaching. Persist in this, for by so doing you will save both yourself and your hearers. | 1 Timothy 4:15–16